Domaine Bernard Moreau et Fils En Remilly, Saint-Aubin Premier Cru

91-93 / 100 by Robert Parker

The 2015 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru En Remilly had just been fined and will be bottled December or January. It has a lovely, mineral-rich, quite intense bouquet with subtle white peach and citrus notes blossoming in the glass. The palate is very well balanced, crisp and precise, tightly coiled but gently fanning out towards the finish with delicate lemon curd and dried orange peel notes, all with an underlying mineralité. Readers will already be aware that I revere Alex Moreau as one of the best winemakers in Chassagne-Montrachet, and it is pleasing to see that his reputation is increasing each year—from the United States to London to Hong Kong. "I was a little anxious because of the warm and dry summer," Alex Moreau told me as we tasted in his cuverie. "We knew it would be an early vintage and I always have to have a Chardonnay with good maturity. But we had a decent volume of rain in mid-August that maybe saved the vintage. We could see the vineyard change. Normally we would have picked between 5 to 10 September, but we found the phenolic maturity was already there and we started 26 August. The highest alcohol is the Chenevottes at 13.1%, so I'm happy with that. The acidity is good, not quite 2015, but I'm happy. I was concerned that they would not show the terroir, but actually I find that they do. The maturation was normal. I will bottle most of the wines in spring, maybe some of the Saint-Aubin in January. There is no rush. The freshness is there, so I want a good élevage. One thing about 2015 is that I have not seen a vintage so stable in terms of oxygen. After the alcoholic fermentation, I took barrel samples and left them for a little while. Usually you can see the wine get tired, but without SO2, the wine was still stable after a week. I used a little less SO2 during the ageing, but I will still add some in before bottling. The last time I saw this stability was in 2003. Of course, the potential acidity on limestone soils can be different, but it is more the perception of acidity. The feeling of the freshness can be more intense." This was a superb set of wines from Alex, especially within the context of such a warm growing season that must have constantly threatened to erase the nervosité of the wines. Although perhaps not quite as consistent across the range of Chassagnes as in 2014, certainly those on more calcareous soils and/or at higher altitudes were advantaged by naturally cooler microclimates. My pick is the superb Chassagne Les Caillerets or if you can find it, one of 300 bottles of Bâtard-Montrachet. Also, do not overlook Alex’s reds that had been transferred into barrel a fortnight earlier and were samples from tank, in particular his monopole of La Cardeuse in Morgeot and a fine Volnay 1er Cru Santenots.